p'tit grand tour

june is almost gone. heat waves must be moving up at a crawl from the south. but i’m not particularly keen on the high summer, when temperatures would go up to 36˚c and never drop below 33˚c (91˚f) during the day time. i couldn’t bear the humidity of our japanese climate. i wouldn’t survive either without my air conditioner, although i don’t like it on.
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a mediterranean climate would be perfect for me to spend summers. south california, andalusia, tuscany and sicily are the best keywords to get closer to my kind of bliss. i miss the breeze from the lush valley or the calm sea. 15 summers ago, i went on my p'tit grand tour in late june. i first flew from tokyo to roma and travelled by rail to firenze and venezia (names in italiano sounds so much nicer). that was my first visit to italia and i loved it there. actually, the very moment i reached santa lucia station i was so smitten by the melancholic feel of venezia, the elegant city floating on, or sinking into? the adriatic sea.
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the sea, i clearly remember, as much as my eyes could see from the water bus i took was surreal turquoise blue. i strolled under the summer sun and sat for a while at an alfresco café table in piazza san marco where a local band played the theme tune of ‘summer madness’ over and over again. on the way back to my hotel i crossed the bridges then i got lost in dead-end alleys a few times. venezia is indeed labyrinthine. venezia is also romantic. it wasn’t a place to holiday alone. loneliness utterly engulfed me, making me feel like running away. i could not cope with it for the first time in my life.
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so the following day i left the achingly beautiful city by the night train, which was named ‘le corbusier’ if my memory serves me, for paris. in the sleeper compartment, two more passengers showed up after me. one was a young italian student who was doing his phd in theory of baroque opera at università ca' foscari and another was a jewish lady from paris who’d visited her cousin. we had chats until the light was turned off. when the sleeper delivered us to gare de lyon (or bercy?) early in the following morning, we got ready to set off and we wished each other a good luck. after i bade good bye to the young man on the platform he quickly disappeared into the crowd…i wonder why summertime memories are always sentimental like this way.
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imagining myself having a mediterranean summer takes me back to italia. but at the same time, it leaves me even more disappointed at the fact that i’m definitely summering here at ‘home sauna’. i’m sure it is going to be another unbearable one owing to the global warming. what could make me happy and positive towards the high summer, then? ok. there’s one more fact: this sticky, muggy, sweat climate is extremely good for my dry skin. i really should think i’m lucky.

bag of precious cherries

it is pouring hopelessly. we are having the rainy season. rightly so. yesterday, my mother called me, saying i should visit her to get some cherries, which her friend had kindly brought her. the season of japanese cherries is so short. that’s why it’s so precious, naturally so expensive. and i’ve come to think, i had no single cherry last year. because i was away. i know i tend to cast my mind back too much, even so, i do have something i don’t want to recall. as a matter of fact, last year yesterday, i left home for a hospital that was miles away from home. i was told by my doctors to be there for some three months. i was diagnosed with cancer.
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that was found on my second visit to my local hospital in mid may after taking a series of various tests and scans. my worst case scenarios had never come true. but that was an exception. oddly enough, while listening to my doctor, i was calm and collected. when i came home, i broke into tears all alone for the first time, looking up at the evening sky and cursing my stars behind the dark clouds from my balcony. in fact, i lost my father to cancer. these days, many people have cancer. but why should i be one of them? i was despair. every morning when i woke up in my bed, nothing seemed changed, so i would think, and even rethink, what the doctor told me was just a dream. a few minutes later, as my brain started working i would have to learn it was not. i was sad. so sad.
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having to tell that to my children, mother in particular, and all the people i love was the hardest duty i’d ever acted in my life. my cancer was stage 3-b. my tumour had grown too big, too difficult, so it was too risky, too late to operate. besides, it turned out that my local hospital had little confidence with my case. if there were chances somewhere else, i had no choice not to take, did i? i forced myself to check into a more specialised hospital on the foot of mt. fuji, at my doctor’s suggestion, to undergo an unusual method of radio-chemotherapy.
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come what may, i’d never regret anything i've done…that’s what i felt. i was ready for anything, even for the worst. on the other hand, i was determined to fight. while i resigned myself to the fate, i smiled and laughed, trying to look as fine or at least normal as possible. crying or pitying wouldn’t do any good in any case, you know. so everyone in the hospital would always puzzle over why i was there.
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i am home now, writing this and that, in pretty good shape. luckily enough, i've survived the cancer. well, so far. under the unluckiest circumstance the luckiest thing was a discovery: i happened to know that i was cared and loved by much more people than i thought. many, many people! i never could thank them enough for their love and compassion for me when I was having a plight. i never take anything for granted anymore. * this morning, i found sad news that tasha tudor passed away last wednesday when i browsed the new york times. she was 92. she lived out gracefully. i’d always longed for her lifestyle. my chancy life could never be like hers at all, though. life is no bag of cherries, i mean. at any rate, i should celebrate her great life as well as my own life (on kind of like borrowed time?) with these precious cherries!
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green flowers

i was completely captivated by the mass of green-petalled guelda roses when i came across them in jane packer’s small flower shop, which provided me work experience through southwark college in london. i did floristry there, just like jane did. that was some two decades ago and it was my “flower london era” when flowers had been my passion and obsession. i do miss florist’s work room saturated with foliages carrying on photosynthesis and the air being rather oppressive with the sweet odour of blooms. i simply, maybe too easily, gave up my girlie dream as well as the chance of a lifetime given by jane who trained me. flowers, especially green ones, are still the things that make me happy no end, though.
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meanwhile, we japanese are having the wet, muggy, gloomy rainy season that dampens our spirits a bit at the moment. it usually lasts one and a half months while the monsoon in south asia last much longer. so we can’t complain. far from it, we can be enthralled with this season of hydrangeas in flower. the stunning blue, pink, mauve and snow white globes are in competition with each other everywhere. and my eyes would be spotting a pale green globe, naturally.
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i no longer do flowers, arranging or wiring. instead, i look after pot plants with relish in my balcony. most of my babies: parsley, (no sage,) rosemary, thyme, marjoram, peppermint, basil, aojiso (japanese perilla) and geranium are edible. which is good. gazing at their flowers that never stand out, i find them subtle beauties and think this must be a perfect life of peace as there have been too many catastrophes on this planet recently. cyclones, earthquakes, tornados and floods, each of them tears my heart out. so much so that i appreciate my minuscule green parsley flowers a great deal during a spell of nice weather. the thing is, all my babies have overgrown since april. i’d need to get them bigger terracotta pots again when the rainy season is over.

bohemian gathering

the first half of 2008 is passing. meanwhile, my single memory links up with another, just like when i click a word or icon with a link on the net. reminiscing about my amsterdam trip brought back memories of my divine experience in bohemia, where i met several dutch artists a long time ago. in 1996 to be precise. that also happened in early june.
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i was then doing my ma curatorship course at goldsmiths college in london, deeply involved in whimsical contemporary art. anyway, my then project-mate, javier, said we should go to “boemia”, dropping h sound since he’s mexican. he told me that an important symposium was taking place at a disused convent in plasy. i didn’t want to go at first because gary, my best american friend, was staying with me at the time. “go, go, go!” gary insisted to the contrary. he said ok; he would be visiting his ex-boyfriend in wales. so i flew to prague.
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javier gave me a piece of paper he jotted the address on before my departure. i learned that the convent was located in the middle of nowhere. like it or not, my journey was going to be adventurous. in fact i uneasily took a local bus from prague and had to change in pilsen. en route to the convent in plasy wonderfully kind-hearted locals turned up one after another, as if they had known they were bound to guide me. i was more than grateful.
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approaching the convent, i could recognise a man doing some odd job in the grassy garden. he was milos, the organiser of the annual subrosa symposium, welcoming participants there. artists and non-artists like me came all the way by plane, train, then by bus or car from new york, amsterdam and austrian cities to the convent. javier arrived late, almost at midnight, by the way. he brought his new moravian girlfriend along in a nonchalant mexican manner.
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more people from prague gathered the following day. a related three-day event opened with music performances, screenings, photo projections and site specific installations at the gorgeous monastery nearby – the art crowd moved as to the programme – then closed with a symposium. we talked about art, of course, very seriously. i was a first timer to see what the bohemian art gathering was all about. much as i wished to return, it became a one-off event for me. even so, i shall never forget the genuineness of the people who talked about art, as well as the serenity of bohemian rustic charm.
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marcel wanders

i was in london in the spring and the early summer of 2005. until then, i had been living in my mother’s flat in osaka for several months, trying to find out where my “home” should be. one evening, i had a big and most regrettable argument with my mother, which resulted in taking another chance to start over with mr dreamer who were back in london. so i flew to heathrow. i soon realised there was no easy way-out, however. he couldn’t change. i couldn’t change, either. one morning, casa brutus magazine, my client, rang me from tokyo while mr dreamer and i were only wearing each other down. there was a god. the voice over the phone sounded like an angel. i started working on a project right away and was due to fly to schiphol in early june. i booked a room at the lloyd, the newly opened quirky design hotel whose historic building was once used as a prison. how exciting my assignment would be!
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on arrival at schiphol, i had a good feeling about amsterdam. in fact, that was love at first sight. ah, by the way, i used to have a very good dutch friend, named ruud, in tokyo. i also remember that the dutch lady-artists i met at a symposium held in a former monastery in bohemia were indeed charming. i was busy associating amsterdam with anything i could think of on my way to the lloyd. i always love the process of getting to know an unfamiliar city. i explored amsterdam till it got enough dark to go to bed. the next morning, i visited marcel wanders, one of the top and most innovative designers in the world, in his studio for an interview. he was so amiable and so funny. then my photographer and i did lots of photo-shoots at the places marcel chose for my article: lairesse apotheek; stedelijk museum cs; club 11; fifteen; droog and lute suites. i wonder if marcel “wanders” around there for seeking inspiration. still now? i guess he does. lots of things must be happening in amazing amsterdam.